Conservative Democrats

The Conservative Democrats are the conservative wing of the Democratic Party. The modern Conservative Democrats emerged in response to the New Deal of 1932; they allied with the Taftite Republicans to form the anti-New Deal "conservative coalition". The Conservative Democrats supported an internationalist foreign policy and free trade, continuing the traditions of the old Democratic Party. They were opposed to multiculturalism and favored nativism, as they opposed African-American civil rights, opposed Catholic influence in America, and believed that immigrants were un-American. The Conservative Democrats opposed to the New Deal included Harry F. Byrd, Rush D. Holt, Sr., Josiah Bailey, and Samuel B. Pettengill.

In 1948, President Harry S. Truman's announcement that the Democratic Party would support civil rights as a part of its platform led to 35 Mississippi and Alabama delegates walking out of the Democratic National Convention, and they nominated South Carolina governor Strom Thurmond as the presidential candidate from their own party, the Dixiecrats. In 1956, T. Coleman Andrews ran as another conservative southerner, as did Harry F. Byrd in 1960. The last major attempt by Conservative Democrats to run their own nominees occurred in 1968, when George Wallace ran as the segregationist American Independent Party's candidate.

During the 1970s, the Democratic Party sought to distance itself from the rise of the New Left, and Georgia governor Jimmy Carter swept the American South as the Democratic presidential nomineee in 1976. Carter supported conservative fiscal and social policies and combined them with moderate views on peace and ecology, and 56% of the Evangelical Christian vote went to him.